Dumpling Grocery Reviews

After I found out that Instacart fired every employee who tried to form a union, I wanted to find a way to get groceries delivered that treated the shoppers fairly. This is it. Each shopper gets the set the amount they want to be paid (and we can still tip extra). I love that I can have the same shopper each week!

Three things that could improve DumplingGrocery itself:
1. Keep an electronic record of each item that was actually purchased in each order and how much they cost. My shopper always gives me the paper receipt but it would be better if I could access an electronic copy of each order. The other apps do this.
2. The search function could be better. It doesn’t allow you to narrow down the search by being more specific. For example, if I type “coffee ice cream”, instead of making the first results things that have both coffee and ice cream in the title, it shows everything that has coffee or ice cream in the title. There’s a limit of how many results we can see and sometimes the actual thing we are looking for gets buried in all the other stuff and we can’t even find it.
3. Being able to see a list of past items is really helpful. It would be great if we could search within that.

Highly recommend Dumpling!

This is the only grocery delivery app my favorite grocery store (WinCo) uses, so I downloaded it and check it periodically to see if it’s become usable… I have yet to actually place an order due to the search algorithm results being so hard to parse. Here’s an example: today I searched for “cooking spray.” I got about a hundred results, 2 of which were Pam cooking spray. I had to scroll past dozens of nonsensical results to find them. I tried to filter by “WinCo brand” (because that’s what I wanted to buy!) And got zero results. I tried different things like “nonstick spray” and “WinCo nonstick spray” or “non-stick spray” to no avail. I finally did a DuckDuckGo Image Search to see EXACTLY how it’s labeled on the package and tried searching that… nope. DumplingGrocery has noticeably improved since I first downloaded it last year, but I still can’t find/add basic items from my shopping list without spending a LOT of time trying to get their search algorithm to work for me and not against me. I’ll keep checking and hopefully it’ll get there soon, I am eager to try the service out! In the meanwhile, unfortunately, I’m using Instacart and Fred Meyer. 🥴

I would never use DumplingGrocery ever again. First of all the make of DumplingGrocery is very tacky & cheap. You get no notifications on your order as you would with any other app that your doing business with. I placed a pick up order from the time slot of 11 am - 2pm. I contacted my personal shopper to get updates. He didn’t have any estimates or anything so then eventually I got something out of him because I said “I’m sure there will probably be a small delay because I placed the order at 1 (an entire hour he would of had to deliver it) so you can bring the items around 3?” He said I’m sure it’ll be before 3. 3:11 I’m contacting him he’s not answering the phone nor is he texting back. Then which I had to go into DumplingGrocery and cancel it myself . Instead of DumplingGrocery automatically canceling the order because it’s behind schedule. DumplingGrocery needs a lot of work. The views don’t app up for a very basic 1234 app. I’m thinking the reviews are purchased because the services aren’t even close to great & the prices are not to good either . Tried to support a local business owner but never again

Having a great personal shopper picked by the family brings great satisfaction and diffuses all safety concerns. Other options, predominantly Instacart, carry with them the unfortunate experience of a random shopper who takes no pride or concern for their job. Dumpling has easily surpassed the massive corporate shopping machines by offering personalized service.

Brian routinely goes above and beyond and exceeds our expectations on every shopping journey. We are a family of first responders who have endured great loss in the last year. Having a skilled, reliable, responsible, affable and readily available person like Brian makes our busy complicated lives that much more bearable and easier on a regular basis. It is so nice to find someone who excels at their job and takes such a high level of concern and thought fullness with them on a regular basis.

Today we have used Tory as our personal shopper. He is the very best he is great with communication during the shopping experience. He texts you to make sure he’s getting the correct item. And will photo the items for you to make sure. He is very caring and compassionate he packs the groceries very well and all the cold items were very cold. He shops just for you then after checkout he drives them right to you so food quality is perfectly maintained. No other service does this. He will shop at all my favorite stores like wholefoods. Costco and Safeway. And he delivers wonderful restaurant food as well His service is a blessing and great help to us He will deliver up one flight of stairs We can’t recommend him higher his service is the very best

This is/was a great app been using for years but they just made it worse. They took away the running total in your shopping cart and replaced it with a running banner telling you to check out. Now you don’t see the shopping cart or it’s total until you see the summary total just before you check-out. To the powers that be, do you ever think about the changes that you make or the impact they may have. Fix this and fix this now. Bring back the running shopping cart total before you lose me and other users and possibly new users. None of us have unlimited resources that we don’t care about keep track of what we spend while we are shopping. This was an invaluable feature and only made the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable. Why would you let software writers change that??!

Jess has been a lifesaver. We’ve used her three times, since the quarantine began, and she’s been able to get the things we need from My Organic Market that aren’t available from stores with curbside pick-up or delivery. She’s so great about updates and checking in as she shops, making sure she’s getting what we want. She goes out of her way to get everything we need, even if that means going to another store for only one item. She’s worth every penny. One of the things I especially love is that she’ll check in before the check out to see if we want to add anything or have forgotten anything. It’s the next best thing to doing your own shopping. Even better. If I could afford to, I’d use her for all my shopping!

My experience with this service was frustrating. I was only asked about two substitutions when almost everything was substituted in my grocery list. This resulted in me buying $60 in groceries I would have gone without PLUS the addition 15% for tip and platform fees of that $60. Totally not worth it in my opinion. Maybe I got a bad shopper? Plus that 5% platform fee was well hidden. Not to mention my shopper shopped at a store that was 45 minutes away. I have someone with crowns in my household. Delivering me food that has been sitting in the cart for an hour and the. In the car for an hour is unacceptable. I’ll risk covid before using this service again. There should be a middle man for complaints instead of awkwardly needing to tell the person they did a horrible job and I’d like refunded the full amount for all the crap you got me that I didn’t want and probably won’t eat. I paid $50 or so for this delivery and it was worth $0. Concept is great execution is subpar!

I downloaded DumplingGrocery because it is the only one that has Trader Joe’s delivery service. I was hoping it would be as great as the reviews but it let me down. The first personal shopper that I connected with was incredibly rude and canceled my order without even letting me know because the “gratuity” was too low so they didn’t felt like “it was worth their time”. I had to call them to figured out what happened. The second shopper that I connected with didn’t even deliver near my area but DumplingGrocery showed it as if he did, so my order was canceled for a second time around, although this second shopper was way nicer than the first one. I was finally able to connect with another shopper and my groceries arrived, but not in the time frame that I had selected and all of my groceries just sat out there in the heat for a while.

I think that overall DumplingGrocery provides a good service, but in between the gratuity fee and the delivery AND the platform fee, your groceries just come out to be more expensive than they should.

Another bad thing with DumplingGrocery is that it doesn’t include the real prices for the items, just estimates. This is not helpful at all when you are shopping on a budget.

As a result I think that DumplingGrocery is overrated. It just too many fees!

We’ve been trying out lots of ways to do online shopping during the pandemic, and also trying to find ways to do so more ethically, and I felt like Dumpling really delivered. Our shopper was great, and the ability to add custom items was a big win. Our local grocer has an online curbside service, but a lot of their inventory isn’t on their website. With Dumpling I could add in all the things I knew would be available, and get them delivered, not just picked up curbside. Our shopper is also someone local trying to run their own delivery business, with a focus on serving seniors. Feels great to be supporting someone in our community like that with a real wage, not just a gig wage.

I had brain surgery and was looking for a way to get groceries hand picked as I would myself. Read about Dumpling and took an hour to download, set the account, detail shopping preferences, pick grocery items, etc, only to find out that they have only ONE deliverer in my area, Dave W., who won’t deliver unless I pay a $10 long distance fee and commit to tip UPFRONT, even though my area is covered and DumplingGrocery says I can choose to tip later. He canceled without even asking if I would accept his terms, saying I should have checked his personal site before ordering. Really? How many pages and how much work do you need to do to actually get decent service? So much for the self-advertised “concierge-level service”.

DumplingGrocery itself had all the items I wanted from Trader Joe’s, but is useless since my only option won’t work. It’s a shame that Dumpling won’t offer enough service providers.

Received another order from Line Lorenzen today, and she provided amazing customer service, as always:) Line couldn’t be nicer or more professional. I’ve had experience with other shopping services, but none have come close to providing the level of service that Line does. Her service has a much wider range of grocery stores to choose from than other apps, and you can even get groceries from Trader Joe’s, which I love:)

Line knows exactly how to pick the freshest items, and always asks before making any substitutions. And you always pay regular in store prices, no inflated prices. If you want outstanding service, I highly recommend Line!

After reading some of the more recent reviews here are some things that might help the customers have a better experience. When you select your personal shopper always send a couple texts to them first before making an order. Some people take the first couple easy steps to be a shopper but don’t take it serious, see if they reply to your texts and always ask if they are available if you place an order. Also, the item prices on DumplingGrocery are just estimates. When making your order be sure to pull up the store’s website to see the weekly deals, unfortunately DumplingGrocery will not show what’s sale.

After hearing how Instacart treats their shoppers, mark up grocery prices, and how they use customer tips to be used as the shoppers wage rather than an actual tip, I was happy to find out about DumplingGrocery! Being able to consistently get the same shopper and have a flat rate delivery fee with no price mark ups, I thought was awesome. I for one love that I can support my local community while saving money rather than feeding it to a greedy corporation that takes advantage of and treats its shoppers and customers pretty terribly. Having the same shopper every time is exactly what having a personal shopper is about. It is also great for building relationships and supporting the local community.

I’m not gonna use the delivery app that starts with “Insta,” after their union busting. DumplingGrocery lets workers be their own bosses. I had a guy who was so communicative and had great service. Really impressed.
The only thing I would encourage Dumpling to do is make it clear how to order from stores that aren’t already on DumplingGrocery , which it seems most shoppers will do. My shopper saw my order for a couple of rather obscure items, and actually knew a better market to get them than I suggested. He saved us time and money.
I highly recommend trying DumplingGrocery and service. It seems better for the workers.

Let me start off by saying I’m very impressed. Not only is there an open line of communication, my order was filled precisely with items I requested. My shopper not only kept me informed while shopping on items out of stock, but had to go to 2 different stores to fulfill my order. Delivery was fast. No surprises, kept me in the loop as to who was delivering and kept me up on the time frame of delivery. Went above expectations not to mention carried all my bags to my hotel room nothing broken, smashed or damaged in one trip.I will be using them again. I’m very picky when it comes to my orders. Great job!!!!

In the “past items” section, developers desperately need to add a “delete” option so that I can more easily find my regularly chosen items in my past items list. I literally get motion sickness from so much scrolling to find what I’m looking for. I have multiple “past items” such as spices that I will only purchase once in three years.

Why can’t the developers also add a search feature to “past items” as well, so that I can immediately find orange juice, for example. I have already added that to my past items list and I don’t want to have to scroll through 200 “past items” looking for it.

Having a personal shopper is wonderful, no complaints there. However, I have been so frustrated with DumplingGrocery that I am often tempted to just not use DumplingGrocery .

I really enjoy using DumplingGrocery for the fact that it treats at shoppers with more respect and pays them more ethically. It’s also not very expensive and I would rather pay a little bit more to actually pay someone what they’re worth. However, DumplingGrocery recently made some changes that are less user-friendly, so making a shopping list is kind of a pain. You used to be able to see items you previously purchased and just add those to your new shopping list, but that feature is gone now which makes shopping kind of a drag if you need to buy a lot of groceries.

I had been an Instacart customer since the beginning of the pandemic. I had some great shoppers and some terrible shoppers, and every grocery day was a gamble. It was obvious that there were wild price mark ups, and there was no option for retaining a shopper who worked out well. Dumpling is the answer to all these problems: you choose your shopper and can build an ongoing working relationship. You pay only the grocery store price plus delivery fee and optional tip. I can honestly say: I couldn’t shop any better for myself than my shopper did!

We read an on-line article about getting groceries from TraderJoes delivered during the pandemic. It mentioned the dumpling app so we got it and through it found our wonderful shopper, Rachelle D. So, without DumplingGrocery we would still be using Instacart, and getting whomever was available at Publix that day to buy and deliver our groceries.
DumplingGrocery is easy to use, and our shopper does multiple stores in one trip, so the shopping/delivery activity is much enhanced. We expect to use it, even after the virus has been neutralized.

I started my business through Dumpling after realizing how much I love shopping for customers! I work with another platform that helped me realize this passion, but has taken advantage of its shoppers and customers.
I love the support team with Dumpling, which has offered great training and advice. I love that I can offer any store to my customers, and they love it too! They appreciate that I do my best for them, and they know they can always count on me. Thank you, Dumpling, for allowing me to start my own business, and helping me grow!

I like the idea of a shopper that I can get to know and trust to do my shopping for me. DumplingGrocery makes that possible. Some features are not as easy as some of the known delivery/shopping companies- But I also assume that this company doesn’t have the big backing behind it. Thus being able for the shopper to earn a living vs paying a Silicon Valley company. I think there are some kinks and ways for DumplingGrocery to improve. But I also think over time it is going to be superior.

DumplingGrocery finally allows gig workers delivering groceries to set their own rates, the money gets back into the hands of the delivery workers instead of the hands of greedy bloated companies like Instacart, where gig workers barely make minimum wage.

Here, you can get a personal grocery deliverer who learns your tastes and preferences over time! They’ll learn what you like and don’t like, and help read your mind for grocery delivery.

The Dumpling App is the best!! It lets the customer get to know who’s shopping for them. The pictures in DumplingGrocery from each store is extremely helpful when setting up my lists. It’s also great to know that I am paying the same price in the store and flyers. Thanks, Dumpling!

Thank you for creating DumplingGrocery for gig workers to take control of their own services to offer customers. I was constantly getting asked by customers how they could request me to be their shopper every time, and now I can.

I needed an app that my personal shopping clients could use to schedule my personal shopping services and send me their shopping list. My clients love DumplingGrocery. It has made running my business much easier!

So glad I found this service.

I love DumplingGrocery. It works wonderfully to help personal shoppers get their same customers on a regular basis to shop for.
It’s nice to really be appreciated for your caring and good work ethics.

1. Doesn't add up prices before you submit payment. First app I've ever used that asks for payment without at least showing a subtotal or estimate.

2. Shoppers had to cancel my order because they don't service my area (Philadelphia). Why did they come up in my search?

Uninstalled.

I clicked on a link from a shopper in my area and it keeps connecting me with someone from California. I live in Kentucky. A person I know is starting to do this and I used the link she sent me to download DumplingGrocery . You should allow for a person to change their shopper based on location.

My shopper saves me so much money compared to the other apps like shipt and Instacart! Also let’s me get ANYTHING from ANY store!

Hey dumpling, you’re missing out on millions of blind users who could use help with delivery. Label the buttons on your app to make it accessible using voice over.

App has no info in it and can’t view any shoppers or stores. Really poor programming. Won’t even allow letters in the apartment number field.

Others have claimed that this shopping app doesn’t mark up item prices like other shopping apps. While that may be true, they instead price gouge you on the back end during checkout... and they price gouge you HEAVILY and unfairly.

While you aren’t paying extra for the grocery items, Dumpling tacks on hefty fees based on improperly calculating percentages on the checkout screen.

For example, the “Gratuity” (Tip) area is calculated not solely on the Grocery subtotal (like all other shopping apps), but also by adding in the ‘Service & Delivery’ fee before calculation. That means that a pressing the 10% tip button is more likely gifting a 15% tip or possibly even more depending on how high the “Service & Delivery” fee goes.

Worse, there’s a ‘Platform fee’ of 5% that’s assessed last. This fee is calculated by including Subtotal, Service & Delivery AND, get this, your included TIP. That’s right, they’re charging you an even higher platform fee the more you tip. This is seriously amateur, highly unfair and total price gouging.

I’m all for tipping fairly, but this is ridiculous and is the very definition of price gouging. Instead of gouging you by raising the grocery prices (like other apps), they instead choose to gouge you by playing these silly calculation games during checkout in hopes you won’t notice. Well, I noticed.

DumplingGrocery also DOES NOT support Apple Pay. You must enter your credit card details during the checkout process.

Finally, you must pay a tip up front. You can’t leave the tip off, then tip after the delivery occurs. You are forced to press at least the 10% tip button (which is actually more than 10%) to even place an order... which guarantees you are ripped off. There is also no “Custom Tip” button to correct their erroneous calculations.

You have been warned.